bout Captain Campion,--particularly one brilliant achievement at a
hunt, when he unhorsed with the butt of his riding whip, and then cut
and lashed an unfortunate young officer in the Lancers, who had dared
say something about Bittra,--the "lovely Papist," who was toasted at the
mess in distant Galway, and had set half the hunting men of the country
wild with her beauty and her prowess. It may be supposed then that
Captain Campion was not a practical Catholic. He came to Mass
occasionally, where he fidgeted in his pew, and twisted and writhed
under the sermon. He never went to Confession; not even to his Easter
duty,--which prevented me from accepting the hospitalities which he
freely proffered. There were other little circumstances which made me
wish not to be too intimate. Whatever political opinions I held, and
they were thin and colorless enough, were in direct antagonism to his.
He was a three-bottle Tory, who regarded the people as so many serfs,
who provided laborers for his comfort, and paid him for the privilege of
living on stony mountain or barren bog. The idea of their having any
rights struck him as positively ludicrous. There was but one thing that
had rights, and that was the fetish, property. Every attempt, therefore,
to lift the people from that condition of serfdom he regarded as
absolutely treasonable; and he was my chief opponent in any futile
attempts I made to introduce some improvements into the wretched place.
And of course he was hated. There was hardly a family to whom he had not
done an injury, for he pushed the law to savage extremes. He had
evicted, and burnt down the deserted cottages; he had driven honest lads
for some paltry act of poaching into criminal and dishonest courses; he
had harassed the widow and unhoused the orphan; and every prayer that
went up for the sweet face of his child was weighted with a curse for
the savage and merciless father. He knew it, and didn't care. For there
were plenty to fawn upon him and tell him he was quite right. Ah me! how
the iron has sunk into our souls! Seven centuries of slavery have done
their work well.

Bittra Campion sat in the large drawing-room, with the high, broad
windows, that looked over a dun, brown moorland, to where the sea-line
threw its clear curve athwart the sky. She was working quietly at some
little garment for a poor peasant girl or half-clad boy in the
mountains; but over her gentle and usually placid face stole a look of
appre